A Corsican Meal

I had my first true Corsica meal today! We met a Corsican lady, Annette, that lived in the States for 20 years so she speaks English. She now owns a Huge bed-n-breakfast up the road and has agreed to trade help for French! So today, I helped her with a conference she hosted for an electric company. She cooked a very traditional Corsican meal: figatelli, which is smoked, pork liver sausage and Polenta, which is a gooey Italian bread but made with Chestnut flour. Chestnuts are one of the things Corsica is known for, in fact we went to a Chestnut Festival over the weekend...The Polenta and Figatelli was served with friend eggs and red wine...yes, even during a work conference they had wine. Overall, it was pretty good, even the sausage but I kept picturing what is was which made by tummy and brain fight. And the Polenta was very different, it had a sweet taste to it...I think that is one of those tastes that grow on you.
This meal is what they used to eat for Christmas dinner, back in the old days. In some villages, they would have a bonfire in the square and share a meal until Midnight Mass.

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A Sunday Drive

On Sunday we took a little break from the language learning and explore some small corsica villages in the mountains. I do not know which town is which but here are some of the names, Sermano, Carticasi, Aiti, Cambia if you would like to lift them up. They are not French names, they are Corsu. Maybe one day will we know somebody from one of these villages!


Little villages are scattered all over the Mountians, it really makes me wonder how they decided on certain spots and why they moved away from the other towns. And they built a lot of these towns over 100+ years ago....no modern machines to help build!

Sometimes I think the towns are movie sets because they are just so beautiful and nothing like I have ever known.


Just a cool, old bridge along the way.

Wildboar is a very traditional Corsican dinner. I am not sure why they hang the skins like these, maybe as trophies?


This is Sadie's favorite part, stopping for the cows to cross.

Hey mama pig, can you please get out of the road?



We stopped to watch the pigs go by and they were very curious creatures.




Our attempt to get a good picture together......


Here are a few clips of driving, some of our friends & family have been wanting to really see what its like here. I will try and get a video clip of our Down town area soon.


Just another video of driving around, that will probably only interest our moms...

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Our apartment in Corte..probably only something the fam is interested in...

I know you guys have been sitting by your computers waiting for us to post a video of our apartment...well here it is! We finally got a phone (and it has a camera on it) after almost 2 months, things take awhile when you are a foreigner. :)

We really like our little apartment and finally are settled in with a daily routine (somewhat)...our favorite part are the balconies and our least favorite part is living on the 3rd story with no elevator. (and a Big girl who likes to do everything by herself).

The Citadel you see, in the video, to the left of our apartment, was built in the 15th century as an look-out and fortress to protect Corte. It amazes me how old this town is. Here it is close up:


this is the view from the top of it:




here are some pictures in case you cannot view the video...I only have a wide-angle lens so it was hard to capture everything in the pictures.

These is right outside our door:


Our entrance with our kitchen cabinets:


Part of the living room:


Our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree:


Our view out of our living room balcony:


The old citadel to the left:


and to the right....our apartment building looks just like these:


These are the views from out our kitchen balcony:

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We are alive...Exploring Corte

Hey Guys! Sorry for the delay in updates. We are adjusted in our apartment (pics to come soon) but we still do not have internet, things seem to take forever here in France. But as soon as we do get internet, we will give more of an update and more often. For now here are a few pics:

This picture was taken on a hike in Old downtown Corte, you can see our apartment building, the one in the very middle! Corte is surrounded by mountains and the downtown area was built into one. Corte is also home to about 5000 residents and 4000 students who attend the university.

The buildings and streets are so old and so pretty!


Sadie doesn't exactly like taking pictures allll the time. This is her "cheeseee, I hate saying cheeseee" face. (She not only looks like her dad...)
The nice scenery in this picture is one of the 3 beautiful rivers that run through our town.

We are thinking of getting Sadie this for Christmas:

And you thought our car was small! It is so funny to see the small cars around here...we are not in Texas anymore!

Sadie petting the Horses....animals our all around us and a lot of them roam freely....she loves it when we have to wait on the cows to cross the road.

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charming (chärm) N.
1. The power or quality of pleasing or delighting; attractiveness

Happy Birthday, my beloved! You still have all the charms of our first encounters. I love you.

On the last day in Virginia we had a commissioning service and the guys dressed up in suits & ties....I had to beg Matt to let me take pictures. This is 1 of 2 times I have seen him so handsome and probably the last!

And from Sadie...


Email Matt a birthday wish at matthewleesummers@gmail.com

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resting and exploring

We have been doing a lot of this...

And missing family...

And leaning a lot about the rich culture and adjusting to the differences....that's a whole other post to come later.
We also got to take a trip to our soon to be Home Town on Monday. It was absolutely beautiful driving up through the mountains and through a few quaint, old, old villages. It is only about 55 miles but it takes 2 hours from where we are staying with our supervisors in Ajaccio because of the mountains. It is a uphill, windy, narrow trip. Our apartment is on the 3rd floor with no elevator but it isn't to far from downtown and has beautiful view of the mountains. We were introduced to a few people, one if which owns a pottery store and they had amazing stuff. Hopefully Matt caught on to all my birthday hints....well hopefully he remembers my birthday this year. :)
Today the girls did some walking through downtown, down around the school and the churches. Corsican's are strong in their catholic Faith and have many, many Saints that they worship, with Mary leading the way. They believe that she lived a sinless life and will interced for you to the father.
They also dedicated the town to Mary for protection and have days set aside where they will put hundreds of candles in front of this statue in old town square.

In most of the buildings there is a statue of St. Mary or like in the picture below, St. Peter. St. Peter is holding the keys to heaven since they believe that he was the first one to enter. They put these sculptures in the buildings for protection and mercy.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born here and there are festivals that revolve around him as well as many Statues of him around town.


And just for fun a few from around town:

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Bonjour...we made it

We have made it to Corsica! We left Thursday around 12:30 for the airport and we arrived in Ajjaccio, Corsica Friday around 6pm. Let's just say that Sadie was...Sadie. I am so thankful that we only had one child to keep up with (although sometimes Sadie can be counted as 3!)
What I thought was suppose to be a 8hr plane ride into Paris turned into almost 12! It was actually 9 1/2 hours of flying and 2 hours being delayed on the runway. Sadie slept for about 4 of those hours but woke up twice screaming....therefore we did not get any sleep. (I think that her ears were really bothering her) I felt bad for her but I still wanted to put her in the carry-on storage.
I was so glad when we landed but It was bittersweet, Matt and I said to Sadie, "We are here, we are in France" and she looked up and said excitedly, "HarrisonAnnabelle!" (these are her cousins that we spent the last 2 weeks with them) We already miss everyone.
We landed in Paris about 10:30am and needed to switch airports to get to Corsica. Fortunately, a another couple that works with the company, picked us up and gave us a quick tour and then transported us....which cut back on a lot of the stress of getting around.
Here is Matt and Sadie in Paris waiting on our lunch (Sadie is was a little confused at the way all the people were talking!)
We barely made it to our next flight on time due to traffic, and this is when reality really started to kick in. We were no longer in an America airport and when we checked in we no longer could use English. It was a little overwhelming but we made it past security and onto the gate. We had no idea what they were saying when they called for people to line up and load so we just waited until the very end and got in line (there is only about 10 minutes left at this point) when we strolled up there with our car seat and Sadie in her stroller, they would not let us take either on the plane and said we had to go back through security and check them both. Uh-oh....but everything ended just fine and we made it on the plane (they waited for us).

Then we finally landed in Corsica where we had a very warm welcoming from our team leaders, Larry and Trish.
Here we are with all of our stuff at the airport...

The stroller and car seat did not make it to our destination so poor Sadie just had to hold on tight. (but we did receive them in the mail today!)
We have been very blessed to have such hospitable leaders especially since we will be here for at least 2 weeks. (our apartment is being worked on) It is absolutely BEAUTIFUL here, God really has given me a peace and comfort through his amazing creation here. There weather has been raining and foggy but is it still breath taking.
Here is our room

Sadie is in the room with us but no complaining from me, look at this view!

I didn't think that jet-lag would hit me, especially since we didn't get any sleep on the plane and went to bed around 8pm last night but it has. I just cannot get over being tired and Sadie isn't exactly being the cutest little thing. We did get out around town for a couple hours today, though and that help a lot.




Tomorrow we will take on the Flea Market and Farmer's market (maybe I will make it into some pictures then)

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